Bioconjugate Insights Calendar 2026

Calendar details

Antibody discovery & engineering

Featured in:
July and December editions

  • The state of antibody engineering for conjugation
    • How discovery is being rethought for the ADC era rather than borrowed from naked-mAb programs
  • How far can target diversification realistically go before validation and safety data become limiting?
  • The role of AI across the discovery workflow: hype versus demonstrated impact
  • Designing the antibody and the conjugate together
    • Breaking the silo between discovery and downstream development
  • What ‘developability’ means at the antibody stage, and how early choices cascade into CMC and clinic
  • Platform thinking: can one optimized scaffold serve multiple targets and payloads?
  • In-house discovery versus licensing engineered scaffolds, and what it means for differentiation

Linkers & payloads

Featured in:
July, August, September, November, and December editions

  • The shifting balance of innovation to identify the next leap is more likely from linker chemistry or payload diversity?
  • Mapping where linker and payload decisions are genuinely coupled versus independent
  • Beyond the cytotoxic paradigm: what immune-modulating and degrader payloads mean for the whole conjugate
  • Designing the linker–payload unit for a target product profile rather than optimizing components in isolation
  • Lessons from clinical linker/payload failures and the design rules they have taught the field
  • The CMC and developability burden of increasingly complex linker–payload chemistries
  • The competitive and IP landscape around proprietary linker and payload technologies

Next-generation formats & emerging modalities

Featured in:
July, September, November, and December editions

  • Are multispecific and dual-payload formats solving real clinical problems, or adding complexity ahead of the evidence?
  • The expanding definition of “bioconjugate” where ADCs end, and a broader modality class begins
  • What the field can and cannot carry over from ADCs as it moves into oligonucleotides, peptides, and radioconjugates
  • The strategic case for diversifying beyond oncology: clinical opportunity versus development risk
  • How novel formats reshape expectations for manufacturing, analytics, and regulatory pathways
  • Which next-generation formats are most likely to reach regulatory approval and move into the clinic
  • Partnership and platform models driving emerging-modality programs

Manufacturing, scale-up & supply chain

Featured in:
August, October, November, and December editions 

  • The manufacturing readiness gap
    • Why promising conjugates stall between discovery and scalable production
  • Geopolitics and supply-chain strategy to de-risk access to payloads, linkers, and antibodies
  • In-house vs CDMO, and how the outsourcing landscape is shaping manufacturing decisions
  • Designing manufacturing for a pipeline of increasingly diverse and complex formats
  • Cost of goods as a strategic lever for ADC commercial viability and patient access
  • What ADC scale-up has taught the industry, and how transferable those lessons are to new modalities
  • Building flexibility through platform facilities and processes for a multi-modality future

Analytics & characterization

Featured in:
September and November editions

  • Standardization and harmonization of methods across the field and with regulators
  • Connecting analytical attributes to clinical meaning to assess which CQAs actually predict outcomes
  • The shift from release testing toward deeper structural and functional understanding
  • Analytical strategies for a multi-modality pipeline beyond traditional ADCs
  • Where automation, high-throughput, and informatics genuinely pay off
  • Data and AI in conjugate characterization
  • Analytics as the bottleneck – is characterization keeping pace with conjugate complexity?

Preclinical & translational

Featured in:
August and October editions

  • Why ADCs fail in translation, and what would meaningfully improve preclinical predictivity
  • Designing the preclinical package backward from the clinical and regulatory question
  • The model problem: Do current in vitro and animal systems truly reflect human conjugate behavior?
  • Integrating PK/PD, biodistribution, and safety into a single translational story
  • How much preclinical evidence is “enough” to justify first-in-human, and who decides
  • Translational lessons being read across from the approved ADC clinical experience
  • Biomarker-led translation to build patient-selection strategy from the start

Regulatory & safety

Featured in:
September and November editions

  • The therapeutic-index problem as the central constraint on ADC progress, and how the field is responding
  • How regulatory frameworks are adapting (or failing to adapt) to increasingly complex conjugate formats
  • Designing for safety from day one versus managing toxicity in the clinic
    • Understanding and getting ahead of recurring class toxicities such as ILD, ocular, and peripheral neurotoxicity
  • Class effects versus molecule-specific risks
    • What generalizes across payloads and what does not
  • Regulation as a standalone theme versus embedded across design, CMC, and clinical decisions
  • Building a joined-up regulatory and safety strategy from first-in-human through commercial lifecycle
  • Global divergence and convergence: navigating IND, comparability, and multi-region submissions
  • Can better preclinical and biomarker tools move safety understanding upstream of the clinic?

Clinical

Featured in:
August, October, and December editions

  • A periodic state-of-the-field read on ADC approvals, readouts, and pipeline momentum
  • Why do ADCs succeed or fail in the clinic, and what separates the winners?
  • Sequencing and combinations: positioning ADCs within evolving standards of care
  • Designing smarter ADC trials through endpoints, patient selection, and adaptive approaches
  • Translating clinical experience back into molecular and program design
  • Real-world evidence and post-approval learning across the ADC class
  • The clinical case for moving conjugates beyond oncology